There are some nail colours that make my hands look neat and polished and unobtrusive (Revlon “Hot for Chocolate”). And there are some colours that make me want to stare at my fingers all day long. Enter Orly “Green with Envy”:

When my local Farmers started stocking full size Orly polishes (they had previously only had a fairly uninspiring, never-changing selection of minis) I was on to that like a woman obsessed with nail polish on to a new range of nail polishes–cf. “dog on a bone”.

The bluey-green “Green with Envy” was the first to catch my eye and after much um-ing and ah-ing (so many colours, so little cash), it ended up coming home with me.

I slightly lost some of my enthusiasm after applying the first coat. So sheer. Ridiculously sheer. Fortunately the second coat redeemed things a bit and would probably have been quite wearable if it weren’t for my horror of Visible Nail Line. So three it was:

My poor cold little hands. I had to warm them by the heater to remove some of the blue tone before taking these photos. The sun has finally made it far enough up to start melting the thick layer of frost on the ground, but it’s still so icy my hands have spent most of the morning wrapped around a endless parade of steaming hot cups of tea. But back to the polish.

It’s showing up slightly bluer in these pictures than it is in life. On my nails it is unmistakeably green. And of all the recent wave of greens this is the one that most suits my skin tone. Not that I have any objection to wearing colours that aren’t entirely flattering–as a complete colour slut I’ll wear anything–but it’s nice to find something that is.

Wear has been excellent, which on my uber-ridgey nails is nothing short of a miracle, and I can say without hesitation: next time the pennies align themselves just right, I’ll be back at the Orly stand um-ing and ah-ing over the next colour to come home with me.